‘Higher Education Institutes Must Opt For Accreditation’

Kolkata(IANS): All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) Chairman Anil Dattaraya Sahasrabudhe on Sunday urged all higher education institutions in the country to get accredited by 2022.

Publishing the accreditation status on the institutes’ website would become mandatory, he said. Fifteen per cent of the higher education institutes in the country are accredited while the rest still do not have accreditation by either the National Board of Accreditation (NBA) or the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC), the two accreditation agencies.

“All the technical and higher education institutions should go for accreditation by 2022 to encourage healthy competition among them. This would help improve the overall quality of higher education in the country. The process has started from 2018,” Sahasrabudhe said here at the ‘National Conference on Indian Higher Education’ organised by EPSI and APAI.

“It would be mandatory for the institutions to publish their accreditation status on the official website so that the students and their parents may know about its infrastructure and other important attributes before enrolling,” he said.

“Some colleges with good infrastructure will be given six years of accreditation while the moderate ones will get three years of accreditation. The colleges that will not meet certain criteria like infrastructure, quality of teachers, placement and entrepreneurship records will not be accredited,” he said.

The colleges that will not opt for accreditation will also have to pay the enrollment fee of Rs 1 lakh each year, the official said.

He urged the institutions to go for a National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) that will help them compete with other premier institutions globally.